Featured Soil Builder: The Great "Phase Shifter"

On a regenerative ranch like ROAM, we celebrate the wildlife that chooses to co-create in our presence. Near and dear to our hearts are the incredibly diverse and delightful forms of wildlife that take to the sky. It turns out that thriving populations of birds are not only a good indicator of overarching land health, but they also serve as ecological engineers, creating much needed balance in complex systems.

Perhaps the most underrated but arguably most important bird in agriculture is the vulture. These giants of the sky serve as crucial "clean-up crews" that facilitate the cycle of life in perpetuity. As scavengers, vultures cycle the nutrients of carrion — carcasses — by ingesting flesh and thus accelerating the phase shift of decay back to "birth" or an alchemical form of "rebirth".

Without vultures and other scavengers, the ability of phase shifting decay back into life would be greatly impaired on the majority of agricultural lands globally. Nearly 70% of what we consider agricultural lands are "non-arable" (unsuitable for crop production) and for a variety of reasons the decay of both plant matter and flesh depend on keystone species specifically created by Mother Nature to serve this essential and life affirming role. Similar to how a cow is capable of cycling nutrients (facilitating the decay of plant matter into bioavailable manure) through grazing, a vulture serves the same role with flesh from a dead animal. Not only is the vulture a keystone species in cycling nutrients and returning them back into a bioavailable form that enriches the soil, they also keep the landscape clear of rotting corpses that have the potential to spread disease, contaminate water systems, and create putrid odor.

If not for the vulture and her crew of scavengers, the landscape would be littered with mummified preserved corpses stuck in a material state of death. Without the ability to break down and cycle the physical matter of these dead animals, the continuous loop of how energy flows back through an ecosystem is broken.

Instead of seeing vultures as ghastly symbols of death, it's time that we reorient our perception to their valuable ecological role as agents of life. It is only through their innate ability to phase shift physical matter into new forms that the circle of life is completed. Here's to the great phase shifters of the sky. May your bellies be full and your life affirming light shine down upon our land.

Written by Taylor Collins

Co-founder of Force of Nature, Land Steward at ROAM Ranch